This is a parenting page, about parenting Page. I am a child psychologist and a mother. So I specialize in children, yet I am human, thus I am full of knowledge and yet as full of emotions as any other parent. I decided to write this Parenting Page since it might be informative and funny for others to take an insider look at a child specialist raising her child. I also wanted to create a way to show Page when she grows up, if she chooses to have children, a real-life view of the experience. I hope you enjoy these stories and musings.

One day when Page was about three-and-a-half years old, arriving home after an afternoon of errands I put the groceries away only to turn around and find Page with marker all over her hands and marker stains all over my couch! (Truth be told these situations are less daunting than when I was growing up, because as a parent I only allowed washable markers and crayons into my home. Great invention!)

Nonetheless I had a ton of black marker to wash off the couch, and Page knew better than to smear marker on the furniture. “Page!” I said in my stern voice, “Why did you put marker all over the couch?!” Page looked perplexed and said she didn’t put marker onto the couch. I said, “Page, you have marker all over your hands and you wiped it all over the couch! Where’s the marker? I want to make sure the top is on.” She replied she didn’t know where the marker was, and we looked around and couldn’t find it. All of her markers were upstairs. She said again she had not done it and she didn’t know how marker had gotten onto her hands. Frustrated, I told her I could see she had gone upstairs, put marker all over her hands then wiped it all over the couch, since her hands and the couch were dirty with black marker, and that had been a Bad Choice and not to do that again. She looked remorseful and said she wouldn’t do it again, and I cleaned up the couch.

Later that evening when her dad asked her about her day, she said it had been good except she had made a bad choice to go upstairs and color her hands with marker then wipe her hands on the couch. She also apologized to me when I put her to bed, again describing how she had gone upstairs and gotten into the markers then wiped them onto her hands and the couch. She seemed to be sincerely sorry.

The next day as I was cleaning up the house, I noticed a balloon we had gotten at the grocery store the day before. It had smudged black marker all over it; it was clear the balloon had writing on it in black marker that had come off on someone’s hands. Page. Page had been telling me the truth. She did not know how marker had gotten onto her hands, and had not known she had dirty hands when she climbed all over the couch. I felt very guilty for insisting she had been telling a fib; it had seemed so obvious that she must know how marker got onto her hands.

Along with my guilt, it was interesting to have witnessed the development of a false memory. In the absence of any logical way for marker to have been all over her hands, Page’s brain had accepted my ‘only logical’ explanation, i.e., that Page must have done it, and filled in the gaps with the story of her doing that. By evening when she told her father the story and apologized to me, she had a clear vision of how she went upstairs, put marker on her hands, and wiped it on the couch.

I went to Page with the balloon and showed her how the marker actually ended up on her hands. I told her she was right and there had not been any way for her to have known how the marker got there. I apologized for not believing her and praised her for telling the truth. I told her I learned something from this – it’s not just her job to tell the truth, it’s also my job to believe her.

 

Dr. Tina Lepage is the owner of Lepage Associates Solution-Based Psychological & Psychiatric Services, a group practice with offices in S. Durham/RTP, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh. She lives in Chapel Hill with her husband, daughter, and two dogs. www.lepageassociates.com. You can find her on Twitter at @LepageAssoc or at Facebook.com/LepageAssociates.